Abstract: As our world becomes more computerized and interconnected, computer security and privacy will continue to increase in importance. My work focuses on investigating computer security and privacy challenges for end users of existing and emerging technologies, and designing and building new systems that better match user expectations. This talk will describe two case studies. First, I will discuss our work on studying the web tracking ecosystem, including a longitudinal study from 1996-2016 and the design of a new defense. I will then describe user-driven access control, a model for granting permissions to applications in modern operating systems that works by extracting permission information from natural user actions. Our recent work enables user-driven access control even for unmodified operating systems. Finally, I will briefly describe our ongoing work on security for emerging augmented reality platforms and security for journalist-source communications.

Bio: Franziska (Franzi) Roesner is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, where she co-directs the Security and Privacy Research Lab. Her research focuses on understanding and improving computer security and privacy for end users of existing and emerging technologies, including the web, smartphones, and emerging augmented reality and IoT platforms. Her work on application permissions in modern operating systems received the Best Practical Paper Award at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, her early work on security and privacy for augmented reality was featured on the cover of the Communications of the ACM magazine, and her defense for tracking by social media widgets on the web was incorporated into the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Privacy Badger tool. She received her PhD from the University of Washington in 2014 and her BS from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008.